The Mix node, and a few things you can do with it................................... And you should be using it......

I will use my character SS Loni as an example, and textures from my other characters..

This is Loni's Makeup 10, just as it comes in the set. As you can see, it is Kawaii makeup with a very light base. Not everyone likes that.

So, how do you change the makeup to get rid of the light base? A few people have asked me that and that is actually fairly simple by mixing 2 face textures. You do that with a little node wizardry, with the cycles mix node. This is just one example that literally is just mixing the textures. You can replace areas versus mixing as well, but more on that later. 

Here is Loni 10 makeup, with less white base, just by mixing the default face with the makeup face textures. 

But what if you don't want to use Loni's makeup, and want to use something from another character? How do you do that?

What if you want to use the eyeliner and brows on the texture from SS Lorraine on top of Loni? Lorraine's brows on on the texture, for a reason btw....

Well, you can do that, just as easily.... She looks a bit different like that.

What about SS Lemura's eyeliner mixed onto Loni?  Not a problem...

These are just quick examples that are just using a simple value mix function, and there are lots of other ways of doing the mixing to make the masks needed to separate out any color you want to add to another texture from 2 or more textures. Both the face and the lips will need changed for a lot of this to work. You can use the same trick to make new metal maps for the eyeliner, make the eyeliner darker, etc.

So how do you make new masks from just the textures? What if you want to replace, not just mix areas?

Here is an example of SS Laura's makeup #4 mixed onto Loni's face using the textures to create the masks needed to do so. That way none of the makeup blocks her freckles. There are multiple ways of doing what I did with the Brightness node. So do that any way you want to so the final mix works for what your after. You could easily make the mix way darker, if that is what you were after. The mask determines if it mixes, or replaces, based on the color.

But what if you want to replace an area, and not just mix separations, How do you do that?

Here is Loni, with Lemura's eyeliner. There is zero mixing anywhere else other than where the white is on the mask.. And because it is a black and white mask, it simply replaces those areas with the other texture... Pretty neat...

Some of my texture sets have lip masks and eyeliner metal masks that can be used to do far more. Those can be used to do even further mixing of textures, adding outlined lipstick, gloss, etc. With a little experimenting you can separate out the blush, etc. Or just do that on a separate layer. Lots of choices. I prefer to work on one layer thou.

Suddenly, my characters have a lot more options if your willing to do some tinkering in the material room..... A ton of options....

If you have my characters, you have hundreds is not thousands of options available with just a few simple node tricks. (Shameless plug, lol)

Loni's lip makeup purposely doesn't cover the entire lip, and can be used to mask the lips for outlined lipstick, etc.

More characters are in the works as well..... All of them are designed to be mixed like this as well.... 

Side note: You may have to turn off hardware shading so you can see the preview better when using some of the cycles nodes like this. I get black face with it turned on when doing this style of makeup and hardware shading turned on for the preview.. Keep in mind that the preview wont show the mixes, you have to render it to see the final mix.

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